It’s “where are you now?” month at Ask a Manager, and all December I’m running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past.
Remember the podcast caller who was Here’s the update.
In short, things got a bit better, then it got much worse, and I resigned from that job in the end.
After the podcast went on, I consciously tried to rein in my emotional outbursts and learned to get used to the parts of the job that I didn’t like (the cold-calling, for instance). I also sought guidance from several friends who had much more work experience (10-15 years) and were in the same field. For a while I did well, and my boss even promoted me a month after.
However…it went downhill after that. The promotion came with even higher expectations – even more cold calls, guessing of prospect email addresses, etc, and I started struggling again with my workload. At the same time, we got a slew of new clients that paid well, but expected much faster turnaround times – which made my boss work insane hours on weeknights and weekends (the company was understaffed). This made my boss even more easily aggravated than before whenever I struggled or under-delivered.
My boss got progressively upset at how I wasn’t turning around fast enough, and this caused more tension between us. I regret to say that there was more silent treatment, and a midnight text duel (on a Sunday!) about how irresponsible and terrible I was. The comments also got progressively personal – comments such as ‘you’re not an adult, you’re a kid’ and more comments of the entitled millenial variety. (It doesn’t help things that I was indeed the only millenial in the company for a while.)
I was called for a ‘urgent review’ where I was put on the spot and asked if I still wanted to work for the company. At first I didn’t give my boss a direct answer, and just listed out the problems I was facing, and how if those were worked out I’ll still stay on. The condition I was given to stay was to apologize to them about everything that I’ve done, admit that I’m just a kid that disrespected them and to follow what they say from that day forward.
I didn’t want to do that in the heat of the moment, so I resigned on the spot – without another job lined up. Although my employment contract states a months’ notice, I was given 2 weeks and my portfolio was ‘spot-checked’ on my last day.
I did write my (now-ex) boss a note to smooth things out later, and doing that required me to swallow my pride and be completely accountable for my role in the communication/job breakdown. Me and my ex-boss are now in somewhat professional terms, though I’ve been keeping some distance from her just to recover from all the drama that happened.
I took several weeks off after resigning to relax, recover and detach myself from work and reflect on what happened. During this time I had supportive friends that I could safely process feelings with, and with their support I started job-searching again. They also offered me tips on how to control my emotions when I interviewed with potential companies.
I started my new role in January – in an in-house position that involved much more of my core experience (writing). No sales, cold-calls or email-hunting is needed for this role – though if it is needed at some point in the future, I now know a little more about what I should do.
My new firm is a larger multi-national and has a lot more structure (and built-in boundaries) to how work is done, which I felt was just what I needed at this point of time. It’s a clean slate – a place where I can form new habits about managing emotions in the office. My new boss so far has been very encouraging, and he made it clear from the get-go that we are encouraged to process our emotions – just that it needs to be only for a moment, and then we should move on to ‘now what can I do to solve it’. Having this clear process spelled out from him was something that I really appreciated.
I’ve read the comments that were posted when I did the podcast back in August. Some of the commenters pointed out that I had a major problem with how I handled my emotions in work, that what I said was insubordinate, etc. I had a knee-jerk reaction when reading those comments – but as I’m now removed from the situation, I realized that they were right. I couldn’t control the way that my boss responded to me, but I can certainly learn how to control my own responses and I look forward to practicing and improving in this skill in my new workplace.
update: my out-of-control emotions are getting me in trouble at work was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.
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